Tuesday, December 17, 2013

I used to have a blog that
exposed the hideous truths behind classic Christmas-related songs. I enjoyed
writing it because it got everyone all bummed out. It was really good:
well-researched and humorous with purpose. Well, it was mediocre at best, but
there were occasionally favorable moments.

Instead of posting it again, I’m writing this blog to
counter that one. It’s fairly known that I dislike Christmas and its entire
wretched season, which somehow grows longer each year. I think it’s completely phony and full of uncomfortable obligations that ultimately don’t matter. But enough
humbug (for now). As the title spoiled, this blog shall list five things
related to the horribly obnoxious season which I actually enjoy. Yule love it!

Snow

I love cold weather, especially
when snow joins the party. I love looking at snow, playing in it, and even
shoveling it, though I most certainly will not shovel your stupid driveway. Everything
gets so gloriously white, the big flakes make for great pictures, and sometimes
you can witness a little kid or ancient fart slipping and getting hurt. Everyone
wins when it snows!

It also makes me feel really good when people whine and
complain about the snow. To know that I enjoy the hell out of something that
makes people unhappy really lights a fire under my Yule log.

Another enjoyable factor
about snow is when people freak out and buy gallons of water and loaves of bread
because we’re supposed to get three inches and clearly they’ll be trapped
inside for weeks.

Unfortunately, people lately like
to say that they’ve “outgrown” snow because now they have to shovel it instead
of playing in it. I say do both! Go jump off a porch into a fresh pile of snow!
It’s so nice!

Christmas
Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)

Many people know this song by the
Trans-Siberian Orchestra, a side project for members of Savatage, who
released the original version in 1995 on their album Dead Winter Dead. It got an even bigger boost when a popular video featuring
holiday lights on a house that awesomely blinks in rhythm to this song came out. Aside
from being a great tune, it was inspired by something equally awesome, though sad. A cellist (guy who plays the cello; nothing
to do with an iPhone) who had left Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
returned years later to find his native city in ruins. Amid the fighting and bombing, he climbed
what was left of a fountain and began playing his cello. He did this to show
that not all beauty was lost to destruction. He posited that both sides could
have just enjoyed the music had they bothered to stop fighting for a moment.
This idea is represented in the song by the orchestra and heavy guitars “doing
battle” with each other.

His hope for ending the fighting
had failed but his story was told when a local reporter tracked him down to
ask why he did such a wonderful thing in such a dangerous area. His answers
were simple and fairly obvious.

His name is Vedran Smailović.

Krampus

You know how
you’ve always heard that this Santa Claus has lists labeling nice and naughty
children? The nice ones supposedly get gifts but what about the naughty ones?
You may think they receive coal in their stockings, which is still a gift and can actually be quite useful. Instead (or in addition)
they get to deal with Krampus. In Germanic folklore, Saint Nicholas brings good
children gifts every December. To contrast, Krampus, a demonic-looking hellbeast,
is in charge of the bad children. He arrives with a whip and chains, stuffs bad
kids into his bag, and brings them to his lair, which is similar to a
more-familiar fiery place that’s below ground. It is said that Krampus stepped
in once bratty kids were no longer afraid of a jolly man bringing them coal. In
real life, on Krampusnacht, the eve
of Saint Nicholas Day, chain- and whip-wielding drunks
dress up as insane goat-men and terrorize children into behaving properly. In case you couldn't figure it out, I generally enjoy things that frighten
children...

Bad Santa

As you could
probably guess, I enjoyed the likes of the Grinch and Ebenezer Scrooge while
growing up; but what bothered me about their stories was the end. Sure, people
can change, but the 180s these characters pulled never struck me as believable.
I would watch about two-thirds of the stories and imagine my own ending, where
Christmas was ruined and everyone was not necessarily miserable, but more aware
of their own selfishness. I thought I would never again watch an entire Christmas movie. Then stepped
in a drunken Billy Bob Thornton. I watched with glee as his Santa would get
drunk, vomit, get drunk, steal things, get drunk, pick up gross women, and get
drunk, all while saving some time to get drunk. I laughed and loved it, then was
saddened by the thought that his tale was probably going to end like my other
heroes. It sort of did, but in a perfectly negative manner. I don’t like
kids but how could anyone not change after hanging with Thurman Merman for a
few weeks?

Home Alone is
great too.

Christmas
Date Rape

My last favorite thing about the
Christmas season is a song which is apparently not called 'Christmas Date Rape', but ‘Baby, It’s Cold
Outside’. It was written by Frank Loesser, who wrote songs for Guys And Dolls,
among other popular plays. He performed it with his wife, who referred to it as
“our song”. Then, in typical Gene Autry-esque Yuletide fashion, Loesser made his wife very sad by selling the song's rights for personal
profit.

Have you ever really listened to
the lyrics? The song is about a woman who is over a man’s house. She tries to leave
but he keeps convincing her to stay with the same rebuttal that gets more aggressive and just creepier. I’ve called the song ‘Christmas Date Rape’ around people who
thought I was being a big jerk only to hear actual lines like ‘Say, what’s in this
drink?’ While I am no fan of date rape, the idea of it being so overt in a
popular noel amuses me greatly. Take another listen and enjoy!

Lest you forget my old blog and its
curmudgeonly mis-cheer, I now present this lovely summary of it:

-‘Jingle Bells’ has nothing to do
with Christmas but a whole lot to do with alcoholism, adultery, and ignorance.
And it was written by a Confederate soldier.

-‘The Twelve Days Of Christmas’
was written as a drinking game in the Middle Ages. This song is misogynistic, I could never figure out why lords leap; and they are Colley birds- not 'calling'. Thankfully, there is (for now)
only one day of Christmas, which I think is still too many.

-Grandma got run over by a
reindeer, huh? At least Grandpa is getting drunk and gambling. In fact, once word arrives that Grandma has been brutally killed, nobody cares other than to wonder if they should return the gifts they
got for her. Nice, real nice.

-The creator of the storybook ‘Rudolph The
Red-Nosed Reindeer’ received no royalties when it was made into a song and
movie. He died broke and alone. And try not to overlook the moral of the story- it's fine to make fun of someone for being
different so long as you’re nice if they selflessly get you out of a jam.

-The disobedient brat who saw his
mommy kissing Santa Claus will be scarred for life and grow up to think adultery
is acceptable and/or that his parents are weird perverts.

-The Christmas Shoes. I mean,
come on.

To close, Christmas is awful and
I’m going to start gut-punching people for every commercial that uses the
melody of a carol but changes its words to something like ‘Tis the season to
buy a Honda’ or whatever happens. Cars, jewelry, over-priced toys. Save your
time and money and just enjoy the company of those around you, if possible. If you feel like
getting these people gifts, do it randomly instead of when you’re ‘supposed to’.
And if the thought is really what counts, put some actual thought into these
gifts.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

A bunch of years ago, in a place that is approximately 5,794 miles
from where I am sitting, Pyramids were erected. Yes, I said erected. These
massive structures were each built for one dead ruler, who was wrapped up and
shut into a secret room filled with riches. How was the room secret? Well,
slaves were mainly responsible for building the Pyramids, burying the pharaoh within,
then booby (huh huh, booby)-trapping the rooms and halls on their way out to
prevent thieves from entering the tomb. These slaves and other unlucky workers were
then violently murdered and thrown into mass graves, which were a fraction of
the size of a Pyramid and held hundreds of bodies. Isn't my blog full of
fascinating information? Too bad nobody reads it.

Anyway, it was eventually decided that neither of these methods
was acceptable- hundreds in a mass grave or a giant tomb for one guy. So
cemeteries, which are an odd combination of the two, came to be. My point here
is that cemeteries have also run their course.

Now, the etymology of 'cemetery' is
all Greek to me, but Wikipedia describes a cemetery as 'a spatially defined
area where the remains of dead people are buried'. The remains of dead people.
This, to me, sounds a lot like rotting flesh and a gathering of bones which
could be fashioned into weapons for hunting bison. Instead, this is all just…
below ground. What is the point?

Some people find solace in visiting
the graves of their fallen loved ones. Some people also smear peanut butter on
their genitalia and allow their dogs to lick it off. Just because it feels good
doesn’t mean it’s right.

So what happens after death? It's difficult to find writing on
this topic but some that I've found allude to things called souls and thetans
and places such as heaven, Chuck E Cheese, and nirvana, even though that's a state
of being as opposed to an invisible location. Believe what you will but know
this one fact- Upon the cease of bodily life, many many people pay many many
dollars for many many loved ones to be inserted into an expensive box which
will be lowered into the ground and covered with soil, never to be seen again.
What a archaic, pointlessly depressing, ugly ritual that renders the land
useless.

You're looking for a solution to this disaster, correct? Of course
you are and of course I have one. A very simple one which some cultures already
embrace and on which these folks
have improved the idea. Get ground up and planted as a tree! Can you sit under a
tombstone and read? Can you fall out of a plot marker? Does a mausoleum go
through photosynthesis, thus creating life-giving oxygen for live people to
breathe?

Is that idea a little too hippie and ideal for you? Then have a
Viking funeral! That's what I want, should I become a corpse. I'm not a Viking
but I'm also not a cranky old Jewish man yet I use words like ‘chutzpah’ and ‘shmutz’.
Bad analogy; I care. For a Viking funeral, the body in question is placed on
some sort of craft made from wood and tastefully decorated by loved ones and
adoring fans. Craft and body are then set ablaze, on fire, ENGULFED BY FLAMES.
Craft and body and fire are then pushed off to sea and observed until all are
consumed. Then, possibly and hopefully, there is a wild beach party in the deceased's
honor. Wood from the Earth, open air, fire, and water releasing a spirit to
wherever spirits go. All five elements. Wonderful.

Is that too Anglo-Saxon for you? Then just volunteer for your body
to be eaten by something. I actually wrote that as an alternative but as an
insult it's not a bad suggestion if you'd like to go do that right now.

As with any brilliantly flawless and
spectacular idea, there is a downside to cemetery elimination- loss of jobs.
Sure, greenskeepers could find other work, but what about funeral directors,
their employees, and headstone makers? Well, they could learn another trade.
This is the 90s, after all. Also, certain florists could lose considerable
business. What they could do is hire writers to petition Hallmark to invent
another holiday like they did with Valentine’s Day to boost their floral sales.
See, I think of everyone.

And speaking of flowers, how much death does a cemetery need to
consume? Weeping people lay flowers six feet above their relative or friend's
rotting corpse, and what happens to the flowers? They become rotting flora-corpses.
The same thing happens to all of the arrangements delivered to funeral homes.
The death of one human causes other humans to kill hundreds if not thousands of
plants. Zennists believe in balance. This is a great example of the opposite.

My big question is, 'What will
happen when there's no more room for dead people?' It must happen eventually;
Earth’s population is only going to increase. Don't tell me they're going to
keep adding cemeteries until the world is clad with rocks listing people's
names and some numbers. But what’s the alternative? Dig people up and replace
them? Who decides this? Instead of nonsense, use this land productively.
Housing of some kind, a social gathering place filled with bonfire pits, a
field somehow used to discipline rude children; there are lots of ideas. 'Oh,
but if we dig up the bodies to reuse the land, whatever we put there will be
haunted.' Shut up. You're a superstitious moron who should be thrown into a
volcano. Hey, there's another nice alternative to cemeteries!

FAQs

What would
you want done with your Earthly body should you become so intelligent that you
no longer have a use for it?

I've already
answered this. Pay attention.

This may be
unrelated, but would you consider a job as an executioner?

Friday, September 27, 2013

I
consider myself to be unoffendable, especially when it comes to my geographical
background. Call me this, call me that- I don't care. For those wondering, I am
1/2 Spanish, 1/4 Irish, and 1/4 Belgian- spic,
dago, mick, waffle-lover (people don't really make fun of Belgians).
They're all fine with me, and you know why? To give the obvious quote by the wonderful
George Carlin, "They're only words." I appreciate a good insult if
it's done cleverly, no matter who the recipient is. But if it's something
stupid meant in a hurtful way, I just kind of feel bad for the insulter, who
probably has no idea what he or she is actually saying. And that's why we're
here today- to explain some common slurs and why they're actually not very harmful.

To
start with myself, spic wouldn't even
be accurate. It's a shortened form of 'Hispanic' and for some reason is
generally reserved for Central and South Americans. My relatives came from
Spain. So yeah, don't call me that, if only because it's inaccurate. Dago is an odd word the British used to
describe Spaniards, Italians, and/or the Portuguese. It's often used
"against" Spaniards as a shortened form of the name Diego. How mean.

I'll get to mick
in a little bit and, honestly, nobody makes fun of Belgians. They make waffles
and their beer is amazing and many people cannot find their country on a map.
However, they are sometimes referred to as Phlegms,
a homophone of Flems, meaning the Flemish, who make up only one part of Belgium.
Flemish is also one of Belgium's official languages and is really just a
strange mix of Dutch, French, and German. So go ahead, make fun of a cultured
place.

I said I'd get to mick,
and here it is: People try to insult the Irish by calling them micks. It should be noted that people
also fail at insulting the Irish by calling them drunks. Mick is the
verbalization of the 'Mc' found at the beginning of many Irish last names. It
means 'son of'. If your last name is McDonald, at one point in your lineage
some guy was Donald's son. The "slur" for Scottish people, Mac, follows the same idea. In fact,
many last names implore this method. Leif Ericson was the son of Eric The Red.
Faroese musician Eivør Pálsdóttir's ancestor was the daughter of someone named
Pál. Unless you're saying McBitch or Scumsdóttir, there is no harm. As a lovely
sidenote, my mother once called me a son-of-a-bitch without realizing she was
actually insulting herself. Irony. See how much fun words can be!?

For an unfun word, let’s go to nigger. The word nigger
has gone through many forms since its initial ‘niger’ word from the Latin. It
meant ‘color black’. ‘Niger’ means ‘black’ in many languages, as does negro, another “derogatory” word. Niger is even the name of an African country. The word nigger was originally not derogatory,
and at one time could be compared with today’s ‘dude’ or ‘guy’. Dude Jim. After
the slaves in America were freed, many took low-earning jobs in entertainment
by portraying clumsy, unsophisticated characters. This correlation gave the
word its common negative tone. The moral is, the word itself just means black.
That’s your skin color, and that’s OK with me.

While we’re on skin color, gringo refers to white foreigners, mainly according to Mexicans. It
means your skin color is white, and that’s also OK with me. White Americans are
also sometimes “pejoratively” referred to as crackers. Crackers are delicious, and we all know that being
associated with delicious food is not a bad thing. Black people and fried
chicken, the Chinese and rice, Belgians and waffles. Great! Anyway, crackers
were the primary food source of lower-class people in 16th-century
England. Some of those folks were sent to the penal colony now known as the
state of Georgia and the term came with them. Do you know who initially called
these people crackers? White folks!

All I can say about gook
is that, like the rest of these words, it is harmless. First of all, this word
has been used “against” Asians, various Europeans, and the English. How can one
word offend several nationalities? It doesn’t make sense. The origins of gook as we know it likely trace back to
Korea, which was originally called Hanguk [han-gook]. Or, during the Korean War,
Koreans often asked the question “Mi Guk?”, which somewhat-loosely translates
to “Are you American?” Americans thought Koreans were saying “Me gook!” and
began calling them gooks, which was
actually their word for Americans! Isn’t this crazy!?

Two words which should be thrown into this cornucopia of
controversy are faggot and dyke. The origins of faggot are hazy, but the word initially
meant ‘bundle of sticks’. This created the idea that the word’s etymology
derives from the days of witch-burning. When a witch was tied to a stake, he or
she was surrounded by ‘bundles of sticks’. Theorized but unproven, it is said
that homosexuals were burned on the lain faggots because they were “not good
enough” to be burned at the stake. Another theory suggests that old women who
gathered bundles of sticks were called faggots.
This somehow got transferred to effeminate and/or gay men. And in Robin Hood:
Men In Tights, when Rabbi Tuckman asks Robin if his “merry men” are faygeles, he’s *literally* asking if
they are little birds. So there- this got nowhere. If any or all of this is
true, I wonder why people say God is so against sticks and birds.If
nothing else, derogatory words are fair in that there’s at least one for every
group or type of people. Gay men had their turn, so now come gay women. Dyke is a shortened form of the word bulldyker, which was coined in the 1920s
by- gasp!- a black man. He was wondering why women were bulldyking, which meant getting women into bed with them. At the
time, that was a man’s term for a man’s job! Like faggots were originally women, dykes
were originally men. What is going on with these words!?

For one last little History lesson, when the (unfortunate)
influx of Italians hit this country, many of them did not have proper
documentation. Instead of sending them away, the immigration workers simply
wrote 'without papers' on the immigrants' entry forms. This was so frequent
that 'without papers' was shortened to WOP. Similarly, when Jewish people
entered America after some distasteful incidents throughout Europe, many of
them could not write their names in English on the entry forms. Instead, they
drew a circle. The Yiddish word for 'circle' is 'keikl' [kike-uhl]. So Italians
forget their IDs and Jews enjoy round shapes. I don't see the problem.

Actually, I do. The problem is with people who throw
these words around to make others feel bad. The emphasis, rather than the
meaning, is what makes a slur so hurtful. So, to quote myself from my first
‘literally’ blog post, stop using words whose meanings you do not know. And
stop being offended by words that really aren’t so bad. There are plenty of clever ways to insult people which don't rely on pointless shock-value.

Monday, August 26, 2013

There
is a dog named Pete. He’s a dopey little thing with short stick legs; the kind
of dog you’d often see on illegally-too-long leashes in the park. Upon meeting
this dog, someone recently exclaimed something to this effect- ‘His name is
Pete? I literally just met another dog named Pete. Literally Pete.’ While the
first use of the sad and abused L word is apparently acceptable now, the second
one was completely inappropriate, ridiculous, and obviously wrong. It made no
sense, but it inspired a scheme in my brain. I’ll get to that. This poor word
is running through a gauntlet of eternal misery. Every time I conquer an
incorrect usage, a newer one is lurking around the corner with a battle axe. If
a building exploded each time ‘literally’ was used improperly, we’d all be
homeless. It’s being thrown around like a live grenade covered in spikes and
bad similes. I’ve accepted that this abuse will not stop but will likely
increase to a clinically-maddening level, but I’m still going to fight the good
fight. I believe ‘literally’ will be used only for translation once again.

So,
on that, everyone is in a big old hullaballoo because certain dictionaries and
other resources have added a definition to the ‘literally’ entry. It states,
and I quote from merriam-webster.com, ‘in effect; virtually’. This has rendered
the term useless. Why? Well, its two definitions are OPPOSITES of each other.
Can a stop sign be red and not red? OK, very funny, one could make a blue stop
sign if one were so inclined. But that’s not what I mean and if you think it
is, play with a toaster in the bathtub. “But the toaster could be unplugged.”
Ugh, you bother me.

Without
getting into a crazy philosophical debate (which I am willing to do), something
cannot be something and also not be that same something. “When is a door not a
door? When it’s ajar!” You’re killing me.

Anyway,
this dictionarial™ addition happened simply
because people are using the word horribly. I know words tend to change meanings
in living languages but I’ve never heard of this. I’m wondering if I start
calling fire trucks ‘buggiblops’ and it catches on like an insanely infectious disease, would it too be added to the
dictionary?

This
unfortunate situation reminds me of another word which has been flagrantly
misused. ‘Anymore.’ For knowledge’s sake, this word must be preceded by some
kind of negative. I don’t set people
on fire anymore. The statement clearly shows that I formerly engaged in bodily
arson, but for various reasons I no longer partake. This grammatical assault
was more common a few years ago, when I overheard a man in Punxsutawney,
Pennsylvania, say ‘It’s all bullshit anymore.” His wordage was incorrect, but I
did and still do agree with him.

Now,
back to ‘literally’, my aforementioned brainscheme goes as follows: What I
would like for myself and people on my side in this war to being doing is
completely destroying the word. I know this is being done anyway, but I’m
talking about savagery. Go to the butcher shop and ask for fifteen pounds of
shredded ‘literally’. For example, say things like this:

‘That
tree is literally.’

‘My
literally name is Rob.’

‘I
literally did a literally job.’

Beat
the life out of this word. Use it where it can’t even be disguised as making
sense by some stupid Redcoat dictionary. Use it as an adjective, noun, verb, or
even a part of speech that doesn’t exist.

‘Literally
is going to literally the literally.’

What!?
Saying things like this will get you some pretty strange looks, however take comfort
in knowing that you gave these looks first to the people who began this whole
atrocity.

Post-script:
I was going to name this post ‘Literally The Third’ since it’s the third in my
thusfar unheeded series, but I opted for ‘Literally III’. This is clever
because it says the same thing but III also looks like the word ill. You’re
welcome.

Post-post-script:
Off-topic, and perhaps this could be another useless post, but I recently had a
nice discussion with two Italians about the use of ‘You’re welcome’ as a
response to being thanked. I think it makes no sense. Here is what does make
sense- ‘Hey, this is your first time to my house. You’re welcome.’ It’s a
gestural statement. ‘Thanks for helping me move my couch.’ ‘You’re welcome.’
‘To what? The couch? But it’s already mine. And it smells funny.’ This is how I
see it: As usual, the Europeans have it right. Bitte. De nada. De rien. Prego. Tað
var so lítið. Khahesh mikonam. Не за что!